Closer to Self-Destruction? Doomsday Clock Could Move Tomorrow

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The ominous hands of the "Doomsday Clock" have been fixed at 5
minutes to midnight for the past three years. But they could move
tomorrow.

The clock is a visual metaphor that was created nearly 70 years
ago by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Each year, the
magazine's board assesses threats to humanity — with special
attention to nuclear warheads and climate change — to decide
whether the Doomsday Clock needs an adjustment. The closer the
hands are to midnight, the closer the world is to a potentially
civilization-ending catastrophe.

Tomorrow (Jan. 22), at a news conference in Washington, D.C., The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce where the hands
will rest for 2015. [ End
of the World? Top Doomsday Fears ]

In 1945, shortly after the United States dropped atomic bombs on
the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a group of
Manhattan Project scientists from the University of Chicago
created The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, with a
mission to help educate the public about the dangers of nuclear
weapons. Two years later, the group came up with the idea for the
Doomsday Clock.
Martyl Langsdorf, a painter and wife of one of the scientists
who worked on the Manhattan Project, illustrated the clock for
the magazine cover. At the time, it was set at 11:53 p.m.

In 1953, the clock was set at 11:58 p.m., the closest it's ever
been to midnight, after both the United States and the Soviet
Union conducted their first tests of the hydrogen bomb. The
clock's hands retreated to 11:43 p.m., 17 minutes to midnight, in
December 1991, after the world's nuclear superpowers signed the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. But since then, the board's
outlook has only been grimmer.

In January 2012, the clock's hands were pushed to 11:55 p.m., 1
minute closer to midnight than the previous year. At the time,
the board was particularly concerned about the nuclear meltdown
in Japan's Fukushima power plant and the creation of an
airborne strain of H5N1 influenza virus. In 2013 and 2014,
the
clock's hands didn't budge.

As in past years, the board said climate change and nuclear
warheads are the two major threats in 2015 that will influence
its decision to move the hands of the clock. In a statement, the
board listed some events in the past year that have influenced
their deliberations: a worrying report in November 2014 from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);
"inadequate" international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions
during recent U.N. climate talks in Lima, Peru; and a lack of
progress in the United States and Russia to shrink nuclear
arsenals.